


Dragon's Den

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's when I saw her," Matt says.</p>
<p>"Her."</p>
<p>Matt frowns and leans forward in the chair, props his elbows on his knees and darts a wary glance toward the guard at the door.  "The dragon," he hisses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragon's Den

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's spook_me community for the prompt 'dragon'
> 
> * * *

The smell hits John as soon as he steps onto the ward – the bitter blend of meds, antiseptic and stale air that makes his nose twitch. He's been a cop for too damn long, though, and he keeps his face bland and his eyes straight ahead, follows the squeaking footsteps and jangle of the guard's keys to the day room. 

The dim, narrow hallway leads to a vast open space – white walls, scuffed formica tables and chairs, oversized windows that look out over a parkette and the back of a junkyard. Someone's taken the time to tape posters onto the walls, neon abstracts and bubbling brooks and macros of orange and yellow flowers. It's almost enough to draw the eye away from the bars on the windows and the faded linoleum and the hard eyes of the day room guard. The one who led him inside was old, soft. This one has a set to his eyes that marks him as anything but the sort, a sharp glint that makes John wonder exactly what he gets up to when he's alone with the sad-sacks currently rolling play-doh worms and muttering over puzzles with missing pieces.

He puts the guard out of his mind when he spots Matt slouched in a chair in the corner.

The sunlight lands in bars on his face, bathing him in alternating light and dark, and John's breath catches in his throat. He's too pale, the waxy translucence of his skin bleeding into the white institutional uniform, the dark mop of unruly hair and thick eyebrows standing out in stark relief against his pallid skin. Too pale and too skinny, and John wonders how long it's been since he had a decent meal, how much sleep he's getting at night. He wonders about all the things it used to be his job to worry about, back when Matt was sharing his life and his bed.

Matt glances away from the window at the sound of his footfalls, his distracted gaze turning into a tentative smile when he sees him. He's halfway out of the chair by the time John crosses the room, and John's heart lurches and falters at the look of hope on his face.

"McClane! Jesus Christ, took you long enough!"

"Hey, kid." 

Just two words, but they're enough to make Matt pause, to wipe the tentative smile from his face. He slumps back into his seat, and John snags another chair so that he has something to do with his hands, so that he doesn't pull the damn kid into his arms and reassure him that everything going to be all right. He might be a prick but he's done his best never to lie to Matt. And things sure as fuck aren't all right.

"So," Matt says, "I take it you're not here to save my ass."

"I'm here to talk," John answers. "Tell me what happened."

Matt's eyebrows knit together. "Oh, so you're here as a _cop_. Well, _Detective_ McClane, I already told the local PD, and the NYPD, and about half a dozen shrinks. I'm sure they've written up a nice little paper all about my delusional tendencies by now. You can read all about it when they publish." 

John stifles a sigh as he takes his own seat, pulls the chair a little closer to the window and pretends he doesn't notice how Matt inches away from him. 

"I'm not here as a cop. Hell, I ain't even here officially, I'm over in East Flatbush takin' a statement right now." He slants a glance at the kid. "If anybody asks, you're a forty-two year old female accountant who chain-smoke Parliaments and may have overheard a strange cell conversation with Nino Giabretti."

When the corners of Matt's lips twitch, Johns leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Tell me what happened," he says. "Just talk to me, kid."

He watches as Matt bites at his lower lip, studies him in the shaft of sunlight leaching through the bars. It's something the kid's always done, scrutinize him like he's a particularly enigmatic riddle that just requires the judicious use of that genius brain to figure out. When the stiff set of Matt's shoulders relaxes, John knows that whatever Matt's seen in his eyes is enough.

"I was hiking," Matt says with a sigh. "Up in the Catskills. Near that… place."

That place. John nods to show he understands, looks away when Matt shifts in the thinly padded chair and licks his lips. Tries his best to keep any emotion off his face and to picture the area in generic terms; not to mentally see the little one-room cabin, the wood fire casting amber hues on Matt's pale skin as he lounged in the big old four-poster. Tries not to remember how soft that skin felt under his hands, how pliant and willing Matt was beneath the scratchy sheets. 

Matt clears his throat, shakes his head, and John blinks back to the present, meets eyes that have clearly gone on their own trip down memory lane. He nods again, waves a hand in the air. "Catskills. Got it."

"Yeah. So I was geocaching," Matt says. He blinks again. "That's where you use a GPS device to find items that people have deliberately hidd—"

"I know what geocaching is, kid. I ain't that old."

"McClane, you didn't know how to program your DVR. Hell, you didn't know what DVR _was_. You'd never heard of Nirvana! I mean, John, if we're going to talk about the things you didn't know before I came into your life, we could be here all day."

John opens his mouth to grouse some more, knows that all it will take is a snide comment and a smirk to set Matt off on a tangent. And he wants to hear him talk – god, has missed hearing him talk. He wants to hear all those words bubbling out of him, watch his arms flailing and eyes flashing. But they are at the Eaglewood Psychiatric Facility, not a lumpy sofa between innings, and the only beverage is warm water in a paper cup, not a cold Bud nestled between his legs. At the end of this talk John won't tackle Matt and pin those flapping arms, swallow Matt's words with his tongue. 

So John presses his lips together and bites down on what he wants to say, waves Matt on again instead.

"I was searching for the cache but I was letting myself wander, too, you know? So I ended up going down into this valley and…"

"And?"

"That's when I saw her," Matt says.

"Her."

Matt frowns and leans forward in the chair, props his elbows on his knees and darts a wary glance toward the guard at the door. "The dragon," he hisses.

John leans back in his own chair, closes his eyes briefly and scrubs a hand over his chin. 

"She was huge," Matt says, and when John looks up he sees the kid's eyes have gone faraway, his gaze fixed on something that John can't see. "I mean _huge_. Like Boeing-737 huge, maybe bigger. And green, just like you'd think, but she was like a chameleon. She blended into the grass. Christ, John, I was practically on top of her before I saw her! I might have kept on walking right over her but at the last minute she turned, she… she opened her eyes, big black eyes with yellow slits, and she blinked at me, just this one slow lazy blink, and I swear to God, John, I swear to fucking God that it looked like she was deciding whether or not to eat me, like whether she did or not didn't mean shit to her, I was _nothing_ to her—"

"Relax, Matty." John reaches out a hand, hesitates before he can touch Matt's knee. But the aborted movement is enough to turn Matt's gaze away from the bright bars of sunlight at the window. He blinks, presses wan lips together.

"You don't believe me," Matt says flatly. 

There is real fear in the kid's eyes, and he doesn't have to be a cop to see it. Something put that fear there. If it was something he could beat up or shoot in the face or lock up in the deepest darkest cell, he'd be on it in a heartbeat. But he can't fix Matt's head, and he can't lie to the kid, either.

"Look, kid," John says. "You been under a lot of pressure. The hearings, the investigation into your involvement. Listen, I been there, I know what it's like to have the DA breathin' down your neck. Don't take much to make a man crack." 

"They cleared me of any deliberate involvement with Gabriel," Matt says. 

"There's been other pressures. That … the thing with us."

Matt huffs out a breath, his eyebrows crawling up his forehead as he flounces back in the chair. "That… that thing with _us_? What, so you… let me get this straight, John. Let me make sure I'm completely following you. So you snapped when you realized you were falling in love with someone who has a cock instead of a pussy. You dumped me. And you think that made _me_ lose my shit and… what… hallucinate a _dragon_?"

"You got a better idea?"

"Yeah. Yes, John, I do, as a matter of fact. How about that I, you know, _saw an actual dragon_! That makes a hell of a lot more sense than me suddenly going completely bonkers because, oh no, John McClane doesn't love me anymore!"

"I never said that."

"What?" Matt explodes. "You and your sun-sized ego _just_ implied that I imagined a giant fucking _dragon_ because I couldn't handle the loss of the great John McClane—"

"I never said I didn't love you anymore," John interrupts. "Jesus. I never stopped loving you, kid."

"Okay," Matt breathes out after a long pause. "What?"

John only realizes he's inched forward in his chair when Matt stops his flailing long enough to look at him, and they are so close that it would only take a breath and a heartbeat to close the distance, to-- 

John shakes his head, eases back in the chair. He's an asshole and an idiot, but he's fucked everything up enough already without throwing his hat back in the ring. At least not based on a breathless 'what' and a pair of big brown eyes gazing unblinkingly back at him.

"I couldn't handle it," he admits. "You're right. I flipped out, because of the whole…" 

"Cock thing."

John scowls. "Jesus, kid. The cock thing, yeah. But I love you, Matt. I'll always love you."

For a long moment the only sound is the murmurings of a woman fumbling with oversized puzzle pieces, the squeak of the guard's shoes as he does a slow circuit of the room. Then Matt leans back in his chair, the sunlight again painting him in stripes of light and dark, and nods once. "Okay," he says.

John raises a brow. "Okay?"

"For now," Matt clarifies. "Look, we can deal with all of the 'relationship stuff'," he air quotes, "once you've sprung me from this hellhole. Which you have to do, John. Do you know the juice they provide at breakfast in the loony bin is actually orange _drink_ , McClane? C'mon, that's inhumane."

John can't stop his lips from quirking, but he shakes his head. "Jesus, Matt. A dragon? Think about it logically—"

"You think I _haven't_?" Matt says incredulously. "You think I don't know that I sound batshit crazy? I'm well aware, McClane. I'm very much aware that it sounds impossible that a one hundred and twenty five foot mythical being is just sort of chilling in the Catskills, all right? I don't know where she came from. I don't know why no one else has ever seen her. But I know what I saw." He leans in, clasps his hands at his knees. "I know what I saw, John."

Looking into Matt's eyes, John believes him. Or believes that Matt believes. And when you love someone, that can almost be the same thing.

"I'll start the paperwork," John says. He tries to ignore the way his chest squeezes and then releases when the kid's face lights up, tries to keep the grin off his face as he holds up a hand to prevent Matt from bouncing out of the chair. "You're in under involuntary observation, so I'm gonna have to pull a few strings. Might take a day or two."

"I can probably handle two more days of orange drink and listening to Maria sing _In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida_ all night long," Matt says, jutting a chin toward the puzzle-mumbler. "Any more than that and I really will be insane. Besides, once I'm out… I can prove it to you, John. I can show you where I saw her."

"I'll do my best," John says as he rises. He glances toward the guard, remembers his earlier foreboding and mentally debates the merits of pulling the guy aside and giving him a warning about messing with the kid. In the end, he decides that'll just paint a target on Matt's back. "Don't give the guards any shit," he says instead.

"They're actually nurses, John."

"He might not be carrying a piece, but he's a guard, kid," John says. "Don't ever think different."

"Okay," Matt says. "So…"

"Yeah." John hesitates by the chair, watches the bars of light striping Matt's face fade into shades of grey. His mission for the day – the lie he'd told himself, so that he didn't have to admit that he'd have raced across the city to Eaglewood or to Rikers or to the goddamn moon once he found out Matt was in trouble – had been to help Matt to understand that PTSD can fuck up even the best of men. To get him to realize that there were no such thing as dragons. 

Now he was going to not only spring the kid, but probably take him on another trip to the Catskills to go dragon-hunting. Even with all the goddamn terrorists-slash-thieves in his life, it never seemed this crazy until he met Matthew Farrell.

He shivers, squints in the sudden gloom. "Storm coming in," he says.

"Uh, John?" Matt says quietly. John glances over in time to see Matt raise a shaking hand toward the window. "I don't think that's a storm."

The image is hazy at first, a distant speck on the horizon that grows from one second to the next, from one heartbeat to the next, until the creature is filling the sky and blocking out the sun. The scales glimmer wetly, and when the dragon lifts massive tattered wings to lift herself higher in the sky the blowback shakes the glass in the window frames, bends the straggling trees in the parkette nearly in half.

John is vaguely aware that his mouth has gone dry. The creature flaps her wings again, and this time the gust cracks the glass. John can distantly hear the crunch of branches snapping in the turbulence; nearer, the puzzle table overturns, the late-night singer wails and cowers against the wall. 

He stands in the grey-dark, watches as the animal opens her mouth. A brief glimpse of ragged teeth before the huge head swivels away from the window, and then the exhale sends white fire shooting through the sky, sets the apartment block across the street instantly alight.

John stands, aware that he should be calling in a report. For the first time in his life he doesn't have a fucking clue what to say.

When Matt shoulder brushes his, he reaches down to take the kid's hand.

"One more thing I didn't mention about the dragon," Matt says.

"Yeah, kid?" 

"Yeah," Matt says. His voice is soft, barely above a whisper, but somehow John can hear him just fine. "She's pregnant."

John watches wide-eyed as the enormous animal banks toward the city, two smaller creatures trailing in her wake.

"Not anymore," he grits out.


End file.
